30 December, 2009

This is one of the absolute best translation mistakes that I've seen in a long time. This isn't an accidental typo that was overlooked, but an actual mistake, a product of research and effort. Thanks so much, Gidon, for finding it! Here we go:

So, for those of you who can't read Hebrew, this is a jar of Sumac. You, know, it's a spice, it's sitting right there, on the spice rack. Sumac in Hebrew is called, you guessed it, Sumac. But apparently the guys who translated this jar from Hebrew weren't convinced that Sumac was also its name in English, so they went to look it up. Way to go, guys!

The trouble is that SMC is also the Hebrew root for blushing. So when you look it up (for example, here) you end up finding this:

They were so very very close. So close! And yet, not nearly close enough. Well, I suppose we should be relived that they opted for the first word on the top line of our definition, and not the second :)

25 December, 2009

Well, Ariel has come through for us once again. You all remember my friend Ariel, right? She brought us this doozy a little while back, and has tipped me off to other fun things in the past. Anyway, she's been using the camera on her phone for the benefit of us all; check out her cool photo essay, and we'll regroup at the bottom (there's one shot each of the front and back, plus various close-ups). As always, you can double click on the photos, if you'd like to enlarge them:

Ariel said: "I am so glad that these are medical toys. I certainly would not want people who spell like this to be making real medical equipment. At first I wondered if it wasn’t supposed to actually be English. Maybe it was another language that also used “doctor”?"

18 December, 2009

I tell you, I was looking all week long for a Chanuka related typo. All week! I found lots of breathtaking sunsets, lots of beautiful Menoras, and of course, plenty of Chanuka related paraphernalia. But nothing funny - bizarre, right?

Then last night I was shopping with my youngest daughter. We were waiting in line at our local, classy toy store, when I saw this. No, it doesn't have any English on it, so I couldn't find any funny English typos, but I thought that it was funny nonetheless. Is this possibly sold anywhere but in Israel?

Do you get it? It's a Chanuka gelt machine. Weird, right? I imagine that using it would make me feel all guilty, like a counterfeiter...

It's possible that I just had gelt on the brain, since my husband has been talking about it all week - starting with this article, before he wrote this one. But either way, I thought this was worth sharing.

10 December, 2009

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I love Google! I use plain, everyday Google, I use Gmail, I use Google Docs, and lots more. My verdict: they're all super-fantastic. Really!

But one of the best Google apps, in terms of entertainment value, is Google Translate. It comes up with some of the goofiest translations, ever. It's sometimes quite helpful, and sometimes just awful, and you never really know which one you'll get, until you find yourself rolling on the floor, laughing. Please note that I didn't abbreviate that :)

Anyway, Google Translate has the habit (in Hebrew, at least) of transliterating words that it doesn't recognize. (That's actually one of the easiest ways to tell that something you're reading was translated using it.) In this ad that I found on our local chat-list, it attempts to transliterate the word HaTzaharon. (Tzaharon is the word used for afternoon day care, and this ad is for "HaTzahaon, as in, The Afternoon Day Care.) Okay, fine, we can grant them that one. But it gets better, check it out:

We agree, the English doesn't sound very natural. But do you see the part that really got me chuckling? Yes, there, toward the end... when does it open? From the end of WHAT?

Okay, Hebrew speakers out there: first to guess what that word was supposed to be gets a chocolate chip cookie. On your mark...

03 December, 2009

Here's a classic blooper that my friend Dena found. This may not seem like an exciting typo at first - it doesn't give its sign a silly new meaning, or do anything particularly dramatic. But then you realize that it's an actual, permanent (not to mention gigantic) sign, in an actual, real mall. In Jerusalem, for crying out loud! This isn't some hand-written poster that a high school minimum wage kid stuck in a store window. Someone paid a lot of money to someone to have it designed, and then to a professional sign guy to put it together. And no one thought to ask an English speaker to proofread? It's only six words - how expensive could that possibly be?

Naturally, it's advertising an American product. Shhh... no one tell Adidas!

26 November, 2009

. I stepped wrong a few weeks ago, on a Friday morning. I somehow twisted/sprained my foot, not my ankle, which I didn't know was even possible. Leave it to me to find something newly injurable... Anyway, Friday mornings are usually pretty hectic in our household - we all run around cleaning and cooking, trying our best to get ready for Shabat. But suddenly I couldn't walk, or even stand much, leaving Dave to be Mr. Mom.

That's why he was reading the couscous directions. And that's how he came across this:

17 November, 2009

.Here's another goodie that was discovered via Facebook. Thanks Avram, who found this excellent specimen and was savvy enough to photograph it. And thanks Dave, who is friends with Avram and passed it on to me!

And so, with no further ado: here's what Avram found in our favorite Israeli airport, on a trip abroad last month:

Closing dawn seems a bit harsh. I mean, any excuse for a sale is probably a good one, but I really enjoy dawn. Can we close something less pleasant? Maybe... hurricanes?

04 November, 2009

I love Israel! That said, the ice cream here really leaves a lot to be desired. I don't know why - as a rule, the dairy products here are much yummier than what I've found anywhere else, and you'd think that ice cream would be an offshoot of dairy products... but I guess not. The stuff made here by Israeli companies just lacks the proper level of creaminess - that's my humble opinion!

However, there are a bunch of little ice cream shops that have cropped up all around, and these tend to carry fancier (generally foreign) brands. We went to one on Emek Refaim street earlier this year, and were impressed. They had creamy ice cream, and lots of fun toppings for the kids. And I did find their translation of the fistook (Hebrew for pistachio) ice cream to be entertaining:

28 October, 2009

.
Yep, wow. I was at our post office yesterday, and while waiting in line, I found this terrible (and terribly unbelievable) specimen. Yes, it's a collection box, trying to raise money for a good cause. The cause here is clearer than ever - spelling lessons!

Click to enlarge the photo, if you can't see it well. Have a great week, everyone!

25 October, 2009

.I remember, back in the day, when I had to go and find my own goofy signs and typos. I'm now lucky enough that things literally fall into my inbox. I received these two this morning from Gidon, longtime friend of my hubby Dave, and my newest ATOTS correspondent:

Gidon found these ads on the JPost site. I do understand that they're alluding to the recent discussions about foreign workers - but really, couldn't they have tried to be a little less bizarre with the translating?

19 October, 2009

Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm proud to announce that I have a new blogging correspondent, all the way from New York! She is Something Different, and she found this one for me, in a fitting room, as you can see:

SD says: Here is one of my favorite signs, a classic yiddish mis-translation. :-) The fact is, this could just as easily have been (mis)translated from Hebrew, that haven of double negatives. It's not easy explaining to my kids why these kind of things don't work in English, believe me. But I'd like to think that by the time they own dressing rooms, they'll have gotten the hang of it...

13 October, 2009

Here's an easy one - and another where we'll quickly see whether what I find funny matches what you do.

There's a relatively new traffic circle in Jerusalem, not far from the Central Bus Station. (Just for the record, I'm a BIG fan of traffic circles!) It's positioned on a very convenient shortcut that I've taken quite a few times recently, and so I keep seeing it, and noticing the dedication:

Can you see it? Here's a close-up, just in case:

So, I presume they're referring to this late Max M. Fisher, and I further presume that this was dedicated by his family. The thing is, every time I see it, I become more and more concerned that whoever paid for it did not get their money's worth. Apparently they asked for a square, and this is most definitely a circle...

07 October, 2009

You know, it's funny. When I was a kid growing up, we used to eat toast all the time, and it seemed perfectly normal. Delicious, even. By toast, of course, I mean a plain slice of bread, toasted in a toaster. Here in Israel, however, if you have toast, it generally means a toasted sandwich (as we recently saw here). As in, an assembled sandwich, including ingredients other than bread :)

Anyway, I do occasionally come across a good old fashioned toaster, like we used to have. Not that often, but sometimes. Usually, if the box says "toaster," it's referring to a sandwich maker (you can kind of see one in the second photo here). Maybe that's why they felt the need to explain just which kind of toaster this is:

A jumping toaster! Funny, right? But it gets even better - this other version was right next to it, for classier folk:

30 September, 2009

Today's post includes no signs. Well, maybe it's a sign of differing cultures... I don't know. It's a fast, funny story that ends with a photo (or two), and I'm posting it. This is my blog, you know.

There's a new steak place here in Efrat. We like supporting local businesses, and we like eating, so we decided to give it a shot. It's run by a nice enough guy, and the food was pretty good. For six of us ordering, we got two pargiot (boneless dark meat chicken) sandwiches, one hot dog, two hamburgers, and a toasted cold cuts sandwich. That last one was a little unclear, so I asked what it was. The guy said, "you know, like you'd make a toasted cheese sandwich, only with cold cuts instead." My daughter likes cold cuts, and it sounded intriguing, so we agreed that it was a good choice.

Just out of curiosity, how do you all make toasted cheese sandwiches? I know that I take two slices of bread, put some cheese in the middle, and then either 1) fry it up in a pan or 2) stick it in a sandwich maker griddle thing. This was a slightly different experience. This place goes for the sandwich maker, but they don't use sliced bread. Nope - this was a baguette. And a big one, too. It was pretty long to start with, but after it was squashed in the sandwich maker, this was - seriously - a family-sized sandwich. So pretty, and so strange, I just had to take a photo, and here you go:

Just to make it clear, that's a full-sized dinner plate that it's sitting on. Impressive sandwich, don't you think?

22 September, 2009

.Wow! I signed something at work today, and as I filled in the date, I realized: apparently another year has gone by here at A Time of the Signs! Hard to believe, right? To tell the truth, when I started this blog, on September 22, 2007, I wasn't entirely sure that I'd have enough material to last one year, much less two. Just to refresh your memory, here's what was going on last year. And now? Now I'm happy to have friends scouting things out for me all over the country, and all over the globe. You, too, can be part of the fun - next time you see a sign, menu, or any typo that makes you chuckle - take a photo and send it to me! I'll happily post it here - the more the merrier.Meanwhile, I'd like to let you all know (for those of you who hadn't noticed) that I've quietly started another parallel blog. It's appropriately called "I Wish I Were A Photographer." It's true, I do! As much as I enjoy finding goofy things to post here, I have to tell you - that other one is a lot easier to maintain. It's pretty much me going through the last five years' worth of cool/pretty photos that are sitting, unviewed by most, on my desktop computer, and posting the ones that I like best. If you're interested, check it out! I update it a few times a week.

But back to business. I have no intention of abandoning this blog - as long as I have things to post, I will post! First, a roundupofmytenfunniestitemsfromthispastyear. And now, on to today's regularly scheduled blogpost!

Our friends Aliza and Yishai moved to Israel (and to our neighborhood) recently (woo-hoo!), and somehow managed to find a funny menu right away. They found this while in Mamilla, the classy new outdoor mall in Jerusalem. Unbelievable!

Read it again, and you'll find something else - I think I read it through three times before I caught everything. I haven't been able to decide which blunder is my favorite, but I think that the "bad of green leaves" would be my son's choice. He generally finds any green leaves in his food to be bad :) Anyway, this menu is tremendously funny - thanks for thinking of me, guys!

15 September, 2009

Well, I had this funny menu lined up that was posted recently on the Efrat list. Someone here evidently caters from home, and will be selling ready-made food for the holidays - one of the items mentioned was "gefilte fish with red horse reddish." I found it to be pretty hilarious, and certainly appropriate for this week. But when I started writing, it somehow seemed not quite enough to carry itself as a post. Funny enough to mention, yes, but not quite enough to stand alone.

So I dug into my archives of funny things that my gracious friends have found and sent to me. This one is from our friend Ricky - he emailed it to me a couple of weeks ago. It's an ad from his local paper, listing some real estate. What do you think of the location? Unbeatable, right?

08 September, 2009

My husband is a serious Facebooker - he's always enjoyed keeping touch with friends and family, and it's a great way for him to keep doing that. What I hadn't realized is that apparently it's also a great way for me to find signs for this blog.

His friend Rivki posted this a couple of weeks ago - she saw it on her way home in Jerusalem's Katamon neighborhood. Her caption was "love the English spelling in this country." Thank you, Rivki, for posting this, and thanks for letting me repost it! And now, with no further ado:

03 September, 2009

Hi everyone - sorry I haven't been better about posting, but it's been kind of a crazy hectic week with everyone getting into their post-summer schedules. I have been going through my piles of things to post, though (see last week's entry) and I found this one - sent from our Chicago correspondent - my mom. She spotted this one at her bakery:

Considerate of them to mention, I guess, but isn't some renaming called for? Thanks, Mom!

17 August, 2009

Well, my kids are still gone. I got the new catalog from our local Matn"as (that's like the JCC here) yesterday by email, with the extra-curricular activities that they'll be offering in the upcoming year. I thought - fantastic! Let's find something good for the kids, that will make us all happy. I promise that I wasn't looking for typos. I promise! I was innocently thinking that they should start learning to play musical instruments, and wondering if we could afford it.

So there I was, "flipping" through (scrolling, really) and of course saw the occasional typo. Maybe I'm more patient with our local businesses than with other organizations - after all, we're a small town. So missing apostrophes didn't bother me much. Then there were a couple of capitalization mistakes, which didn't throw me. I did find "astern Dancing," in place of "Eastern Dancing," and that got a chuckle out of me. And "Piltes" instead of "Pilates." Funny! But blogworthy? Not so much.

Then I saw what for the first split-second looked to me like some kind of farming class - until I read it to the end:

Ha! Can you believe it? I forgot all about playing music, and labeled the email with the catalog as blog material. Whew - there's one for this week.

Until I went to look through it again - and found a far better typo that I somehow missed the first time around. Get ready... are you ready? Here it comes:

Yes, indeed, it seems that we offer quires. No, it wasn't meant to be squires, or requires - that one, my friends, was supposed to be choirs.

Ah... Sorry Efrat, I wasn't planning to make fun. But that one was just too good to pass up.

12 August, 2009

Today I stopped in briefly to shop at one of our local grocery stores here in Efrat. Since I only needed to get a few things to make a quick salad, I planted myself into the express lane. Standing there, I saw this - a big Tupperware/Rubbermaid-type imitation box, full of other smaller ones, for only 49.95 shekel. It looked interesting - really, a perfect impulse buy. Then I looked once more at the small print, and began to smile:

Ha! I didn't even notice the remark at the bottom, until just now(click to enlarge the photo if necessary)...

06 August, 2009

Those of you who know me (even if only on Facebook) know that my kids have just been shuttled off to a fun-filled vacation in Chicago with my parents. This traveling as "unaccompanied minors" seemed to me a bit absurd, but apparently worked without a hitch. Anyway, we were there at the airport last night, and of course I managed to find a few funny signs. Now that I know that everyone's landed safely, I'm in a better mood to post them :)

First off: this one isn't funny, but definitely fits solidly in the "only in Israel" category. This is part of the sign next to the elevator, helpfully trying to guide you to the floor that you need:

Ha! I liked that one.

After we saw our kids off, we waited another half an hour or so, as our cousins were scheduled to arrive just then from the States. While hanging around in the Arrivals Hall, I noticed this, on the ceiling:

All those balloons - sad but funny nonetheless!

Then I noticed someone arriving with this box, which made me chuckle (feel free to enlarge the photo by clicking on it, if it's hard to see):

And of course - I've saved the largest for last:

This is actually a pretty typical Israeli mistake - since there aren't any of those "is, are, am" kind of words (auxiliary verbs) in Hebrew, Israelis tend to leave them out when translating into English. But Bank Leumi, come on! You're not some Mom 'N Pop hardware store in Be'er Sheva, you're Bank Leumi!I really need to stop being surprised by these things...

20 July, 2009

I'd just like to thank Dave - when we were driving back from our fun family vacation this past Saturday night, and I saw these - he didn't protest my squeals, the series of suddenly necessary u-turns, rummaging around for the camera, or me jumping out on the highway, just so I could provide you all with this crazy crazy entertainment:

Look it's a matched set:

What's that - you can't see? Here, I'll get a bit closer:

I would just like to mention that this is quite similar to a funny photoshopped sign that has traveled around the internet for quite some time. I must have it somewhere... ah, here:

This one is funny because the typo is in Hebrew, which translates to "Curvy Danger." Ha! It would be funnier were it real - but if you look at the spacing of the Hebrew letters in relation to the edges of the sign, it seems pretty obviously altered.

14 July, 2009

This was in the news online last week. I saw it, and thought - huh, that's a little funny. Until I looked one drop further, and understood what was going on. Here, let's see how long it takes you to figure it out:

He's such a nice CEO, don't you think? That's probably why they offered him the position - it makes sense. Unless...oh, look, turns out he works here:

A little capitalization goes a long way, it's true. But that one was fun!

08 July, 2009

This one doesn't have any typos that I noticed. But the concept was so bizarre that I felt I had to take a picture anyway.

It's for Axe, a "body spray" for men. It's just deodorant, as far as I know, but it has always marketed itself by claiming to be particularly irresistible to women. Their new scent, apparently, is chocolate. Huh?

Yes, I like chocolate as much as anyone else, but this somehow strikes me as... the wrong medium for chocolate. Ladies? Is it just me?

05 July, 2009

Well, look at me, the longtime lurker, hosting my own edition of Haveil Havalim. I'm a newbie, remember - so please forgive me if I screw anything up too badly :) By the way, if you haven't been here before, do feel free to take a look around while you're here. And now, with no further ado, here's

Haveil Havalim #224 - The Fourth of July Weekend Edition!

~~~~~Founded by Soccer Dad, Haveil Havalim is a carnival of Jewish blogs -- a weekly collection of Jewish & Israeli blog highlights, tidbits and points of interest collected from blogs all around the world. It's hosted by different bloggers each week and coordinated by Jack. The term 'Haveil Havalim,' which means "Vanity of Vanities," is from Qoheleth, (Ecclesiastes) which was written by King Solomon. King Solomon built the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and later on got all bogged down in materialism and other 'excesses' and realized that it was nothing but 'hevel,' or in English, 'vanity.'~~~~~

What a lot of categories there are! Let's go in reverse alphabetical, just for fun:

Please send your posts for the next edition of the Haveil Havalim Blog Carnival via the Blog Carnival Submission Form. The method is very helpful in organizing your posts this week. If you're interested in hosting or receiving more information about the carnival, please contact Jack at talktojacknow-at-sbcglobal-dot-net.